


Breathe

by ya_idjits



Series: Hiatus Filler [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angsty Sam, Cards Against Humanity, I'm sorry this is crap, Nightmares, bc of the cards against humanity thing, bobby!!!, but not at sam, cas laughs, dean is kind of a bitch, i'm just drabbling, idk - Freeform, kind of a crack!fic?, my soul still hurts, oh ew, poor lil bub, sam struggles with life, sammy - Freeform, these tags are in the wrong order, ugh my darling, wait, wwbd (what would bobby do)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 11:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1686011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ya_idjits/pseuds/ya_idjits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't even know what this is. I guess it could be called a short collection of even shorter scenes? idk. Lots of Sam angst, bc i feel like he might be pretty calm on the outside but internally, he's flipping his shit. poor bae :(</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe

Dean avoids the Blade. He keeps it locked in its box, but it doesn’t really help – now that he’s a demon, he has the same urges to kill, to feel blood running in rivulets over the webbing of his fingers. Sammy, of course, tries to ignore the bloodlust. He treats his brother just the same, regardless of black eyes or black soul. After all, this is just the more optimistic result of another apocalypse, isn’t it? That’s how Sam has trained himself to think of it – a better way for shit to go down. This way, at least, it only affects a few people, and not the entire populations of Earth, Hell, Heaven, whatever. But it’s still kind of the end of Sam’s world.

This is his, _brother_ , dammit! No, not just his brother, his entire fucking family. His best friend, his mother figure, his teammate, his companion. Dean. How many times has he watched Dean die? Hundreds. Some of those deaths weren’t real, and some were, but he’s always come back. Well, really, he _has_ come back. Just not in a way that doesn’t hurt. _Sam’s_ always been the fucked up one, _Sam’s_ always been the one who’d rebelled, had powers, been an addict, lost his soul, been possessed and used and wronged. Not Dean. Dean’s always been their rock. And now that it’s changed, Sam doesn’t know what to do. It’s a mantra in his head:

_What do I do? I don’t know what to do._

_What do I do? I don’t know what to do._

But he keeps a façade on, so that Dean can adjust. He keeps calm, even though the shit pile that is their life has majorly hit the fan. But he has to look unbroken. For Dean.

 

***

 

“Sammy!” Dean’s voice echoes through the Bunker, coming from somewhere near the living room.

Sam sighs. “What?” He hollers back.

“Care to explain why you haven’t broken the Devil’s Trap next to the couch, yet?”

_Shit._

“Forgot!”

Dean yells back a garbled complaint that Sam doesn’t bother to try and understand. Instead, he gets up and walks up the stairs, slipping his knife from his belt in the process. It’s hard not to laugh when he finds Dean sitting unhappily in the middle of one of their cleaner carpets and pouting. He’s started a habit of letting his eyes flick to black to annoy Sam and Cas, and right now they’re dark and glittering.

“Let me out, Sam.”

“Okay, sheesh.”

There’s a silence as he leans over and flips up the rug to reveal the bright orange of spray paint.

“Did you honestly forget?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Dean, why would I want you to be stuck for all eternity screaming at me from the living room?”

Dean huffs. As soon as Sam’s scratched all the way through the edge and re-sheathed his knife, Dean leaps out, grumbling something about, _“Fuckin’ traps,”_ and _“Demon livin’ in a safe house.”_

Sam sighs, exasperated, but smiles at his older brother’s back as they descend the stairs.

 

***

 

It’s not an accident. Dean’s being a dick, and he knows it, and Cas is completely unwilling to back Sam up.

“Dammit, Dean! I know you’re a servant of Hell, but can you at least _try_ to have manners?”

“No can do, Sammy. It’s part of the package. I’m _allowed_ to be an asshole.”

“Sam,” Cas says. “He will have some urges that he can’t control.”

Sam throws Cas a bitchface strong enough to make the angel wince and then turns back to his brother. “Part of the package, huh? Well, then, if you’re so keen on being black eyed, you probably won’t mind it if I break out the holy water. Or how about the salt? Oh, I know. What if I said… Christo?”

Dean convulses, bending over, and shoots his brother a glare so evil that Sam sort of feels himself melting into the hardwood floor.

“You little _bitch!_ ”

“Jerk!”

 

***

 

Cas chuckles. It’s a good sound to hear, especially since the Winchesters know that they’re the ones who taught him how. He lives with them, now, in the Bunker. Has his own room, and everything. His grace is still burning out, but he never uses it, so at least the process has slowed. He’s more human, now. He eats froot loops with the brothers at breakfast, and he does his share of the laundry. He plays Cards Against Humanity.

“I’ve never played this game before. It’s quite entertaining,” Cas says. Sam smiles at him, dealing out another hand of black and white cards.

“Yeah, it’s like Apples to Apples, except better,” Dean agrees. “How come you never told me about it before, Sam?”

“I found it when you were living with Lisa,” Sam replies, picking up his hand and grimacing. It’s not a good one. Cas flips over a black card. It reads: ‘I killed _______. How? _______.’

Dean smirks. “In the bag.”

He slaps down ‘Justin Bieber’ and ‘Hormone Injections’.

Cas chuckles again, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners and his smile gummy and bright. The Bunker is filled with the sounds of the two Winchester boys howling with laughter. When Sam thinks about it later, he smiles. Dean, although not exactly… human, is still his brother, and they can still find little slivers of happiness, even in the hunting life.

Even if one of them is what they hunt.

 

***

 

Light shines down the hallway.

“Sammy?”

Sam tries to slow his breathing and buries his face in his pillow. “Yeah. ‘S okay, just another dream.”

Dean opens the door to Sam’s room. It creaks. “You sure, man? You were screaming way more than usual.”

“Yeah. M’fine.”

“’Kay, if you say so,” Dean mutters, closing the door again and taking the sliver of warm yellow light with him.

Sam isn’t fine. He never is, anymore.

 _I wonder if this is what it was like for Dean?_ He thinks. _When I was hooked on demon blood, or when I lost my soul, or when I was doing the trials, or when…_

He huffs, stopping that thought in its tracks, and rolls over again, staring at the ceiling. He can feel a sheen of cold sweat making his cotton t shirt stick to his back and chest, and the sheets that are tangled around his body cling to his ankles where they poke out of his pyjama bottoms. Nerd that he is, he’s stuck glow in the dark stars on his ceiling to mirror his favourite constellations. Dean teases his about it endlessly, but Cas thinks it’s cool. It reminds Sam of Bobby.

 _Bobby._ Sam’s suddenly very awake. _What would Bobby do?_

It’s something that he and Dean have used all throughout their lives; instead of “What Would Jesus Do?” they laughed and said, “What Would Bobby Do?” It had always worked.

_Well, what would he do? Think, Sam._

Bobby… Bobby would probably smack Sam upside the head for caving and letting Dean go after Metatron. No, wait. He’d probably smack Dean upside the head for… well, for everything. He’d probably attempt to smack Crowley upside the head for leading Dean to Cain and watching him get the mark. Christ, if Bobby were back, he’d probably slap _everyone_ upside the head. _Idjits,_ he’d say. _That was a damn dumb thing to do, I hope y’all know that._ It wouldn’t even matter what he was talking about, he would be right. They’d fucked everything up, especially this - no, especially _all_ of it, and now Dean was a demon and –

_Fuck, Sam. Breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth._

It was something Dean had taught him, when they were still little. Whenever they came home from a particularly rough hunt and Sam freaked out because he was _nine,_ for God’s sakes, and he hunted things that most kids his age only knew about because of nightmares. Dean would carry him to the bathroom, because he could barely see through blurry, teary eyes. He would set his little brother down next to the toilet, and sit there and clench his hand while Sam retched into the bowl and shook with fear and sobbed dry sobs that bent him in half and made Dean’s eyebrows knit with worry. "Just breathe, Sammy. In through your nose, out through your mouth. That's it... 's gonna be okay." Dean had always, always fixed him, no matter what. Why couldn’t he return the favour?

_What do I do? I don’t know what to do._

_What do I do? I don’t know what to do._

Something hot and wet slid down the side of his cheek. Sam blinked and sighed, rolling over to smash his head into the pillow again and ignoring his tears as they dampened the soft fabric. The night air was cool, and as he tried to get back to sleep, a new mantra weaved its way into his restless mind:  
 _  
Don’t kill Dean. Don’t kill yourself. Breathe._

_Don’t kill Dean. Don’t kill yourself. Breathe._

_Breathe…_


End file.
